Travel

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Wakasan is one of my favorite recent discoveries. Why? Well, 1) they're open late - 11:30PM M-Th, and 12:30AM F-Sat (they close at 10:30 on Sundays). I don't know if you remember my ordeal on finding late night places on Mondays, but, well, this about fixes it all! 2)It's a great deal. They prefer you to do their prix fixe menu that's $35 - when I did, I ended up getting 12 items and was stuffed - probably too much so for 11pm on a Monday ...

Thanks to Mattatouille for pointing this place out to me!

1. Cold bean sprouts2. Bean curd - before it's formed into tofu with vegetables, and3. Ankimo with ponzu sauce, cucumbers and salmon eggsThe tofu curd had a very interesting texture and the dish overall was great.The ankimo was also good, and I really like the combination with the cucumbers!

4. Sashimi: Tuna, old yellowtail, red snapperThey're not the best quality sashimi, although it wasn't bad. I wondered why the "old yellowtail" - because, yes, it tasted pretty "old". Anyway it wasn't bad and for $35 for this and a lot more I wasn't going to complain.

5. King crab legsYum. They're king crab legs, I don't know what else you want me to say O:)

6. Grilled items: Miso salmon and green beans wrapped in wagyu beefPretty standard, salmon's a bit overcooked and hence, dry, for my taste, but overall everything was solid, even though not remarkable.

7. Braised Skate wingsThis was my first time having skate. It was pretty fishy, but also pretty meaty. The braising has made it tender, so it was quite tasty - although I wasn't able to finish it because I was full and also because it was too fishy for my taste.

8. Shrimp with sweet potato fried rollsThis was served with cocktail sauce, which I wasn't too keen about. Overall this was pretty bland in my opinion, although it did have nice textures.

9. ChawanmushiWith ginkgo, small shrimps, etc, this was one of the best chawan mushi I could remember having.

10. Miso soup11. Chirashi with tuna, scallops, uni.Again, the fish quality is not the best, but the uni is not bad. I didn't really like the scallops as they were not fresh, but I thought the other two were decent.

12. Vanilla ice creamI can't say for sure but this tasted very much like Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream. Which meant it was good :)

Overall we had a great variety of dishes, and some of them very interesting ones I've never had before, and all for $35. Plus they're open late daily. I'll be back here, and I think you know when :P

In response to your "old yellowtail" comment, my guess is that it's a "buri" rather than a "hamachi". While they indicate the same fish, for some reason, in Japan, the name for the yellowtail changes depending on size.